UKC

Just been diagnosed with a frozen shoulder by physio.  She has referred me to GP for a steroid/pain killer jab and given me some painful exercises to do.

Been gradually losing shoulder mobility/gaining pain for past few months following injuring myself checking my kerosene tank fuel level (long stretch, grip tiny pin/pull hard).

Any experiences to share - sympathetic noises also welcome as I’m a tad hacked off.

Hi

It's a tough one. I got a similar diagnosis March 2023. I got two steroid injections and things began to improve from July 23. Got back easy climbing by October and had a good trip to Spain in December. I did lots of physio too but I think definitely it was the injections that helped. My recovery would be considered quite quick. I'm still have restricted movement but it doesn't affect climbing or other day to day things. I think that's normal and perhaps permanent. 

Hope all goes well for you..its a frustrating problem. 

I had frozen shoulder over the 2022 - 2023 winter and it was really uncomfortable. At the onset and in the worsening stage, I didn't know it was FZ, so continued to climb and train. At the end of a session, it was very very painful. Sleeping was difficult, getting dressed was difficult. It wasn't fun.

By the time I saw a consultant, Feb 2023, had an MRI scan and it was confirmed as FZ, I was through the getting worse stage. The consultant gave me some exercises to follow, which I did and were quite uncomfortable to start with, but the shoulder gradually began to improve. I still climbed in this stage and looked on that as part of the physio treatment. The consultant said climbing probably wouldn't make it worse.

One of the best exercises, that I did multiple times a day, was complete deadhanging, no shoulder engagement whatsoever, and that made the shoulder feel much better after each hang. https://www.onsightchiropractic.com/hang-away-the-pain/

The consultant also said studies have shown that self treatment takes longer than that by a physio. However, as the physio treatment is very painful, there is a higher rate of drop out and non attendance than when self treating as the pain level can be managed more.

It wasn't until late summer 2023 that I had no or very little pain.

The consultant said that steroids could help, but there are risks associated with that and I decided not to have any injections.

Obviously listen to the advice of medical professionals.

Good luck and I hope it improves soon.

CB.

Took 5 months for me…settled down now. No injection.

I do try to get the rubber band out and do exercises once a week just for the hell of it because I’d rather it didn’t reoccur.

I had a gradual onset of frozen shoulder which started around May last year.... think it was from walking my sister's dog which jerked my arm backwards when it was on the extendable lead. Anyway the symptoms gradually got worse and worse, by September I couldn't scratch my back or put a coat on properly, or reach upwards, and had difficulty getting comfortable to sleep. It was like having a toothache in the shoulder. Certain movements were intensely painful. The GP by this time had referred me for physio and I was doing the exercises religiously trying to get movement back into the joint. I'd just started getting a little more movement towards the end of the year when on Christmas Day I managed to fall down stairs and ended up in A&E with a grade 3 collarbone dislocation at the shoulder end...on the same shoulder and all the progress was set right back. I couldn't even get the arm above shoulder height. I was still attending physio, but in addition the fracture clinic. Anyway, they don't reset the collarbone, the gristle around the dislocation holds it in place and it just gradually strengthens. After a month of taking it easy and very gentle stretching I started swimming, just breaststroke, it was painful at first but gradually got easier so started alternating breaststroke and crawl quicker and stronger and increasing the distance up to a mile. 
On it's own, the swimming has really not only strengthened the dislocation but has vastly increased the range of movement in the shoulder, on top of that, I had a cortisone in the joint capsule around three weeks ago. I probably have around 95% range back now and virtually no pain apart from stretching into the extremity.

There is light at the end of the tunnel 

I had this 10 years ago following a mountain bike crash. It developed fairly slowly and was both debilitating and very painful. After about 3 months of physio I had a distension arthrogram, a procedure which sounds horrendous but was easy and painless. I went in unable to raise my arm beyond the horizontal and came out able to do windmills. However had a LOT of physio to do afterwards to regain mobility. The importance of the physio cannot be overstated. I have a fully functioning shoulder now but do have an imbalance issue which is an ongoing project. 

Hammer it into your GP that you're a climber/gymnast/dancer and you absolutely need to have working shoulders and that your life isn't worth living without them. I was lucky in that the Dr I saw was Andrew Murray (utrarunner) who understood that I wanted to be able to do more than lift a glass.

Good luck, it's a really unpleasant condition but generally fixable.

Edit: do a search on here, there have been a few threads on it over the years. Also search for adhesive capsulitis.

Thanks everyone.  I’ve necked some ibuprofen and started the exercises - physio wasn’t kidding, they are very painful.  She normally gets folk to have return appointments with her but reckons she can trust me to do the exercises myself as I’m well motivated.

Cant believe how such seemingly innocuous exercises can hurt so much!

I can. Believe also that it will get better.

https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/clair-davies/the-frozen-shoulder-workbook...

Have used trigger point massage to treat lots of injuries and niggles over the years. These books are excellent.

Also worth getting one of these to get to any trigger points you may have in your shoulder and back muscles:

https://www.thinksport.co.uk/thera-cane-original-massager.html

Good luck. It takes time, more than you think but you can get there.

happened to me after a shoulder operation. took about 6 months to be normal and 12 months to be really happy with it.

Do the exercises. I found hanging the washing out was a good workout, gradually raising the height of the line and progressing from socks to heavy duvet covers as I got more mobility

I suffered from a frozen shoulder a couple of years ago. 
 

I read somewhere that the typical experience was that the condition got worse for 3 months, then stayed like that for 3 months, then cleared up over another 3 months. It was depressing to think that I would have 9 months of impaired mobility, but that is exactly how it played out.

I had the steroid injection but I was one of the unlucky ones and it made no difference for me - maybe I didn’t get it soon enough.

The exercises were slightly useful, but I think it was more a case of trying to minimise muscle wastage rather than actively heal the condition.  Some of the exercises were too painful to do but my physio told me to avoid those ones at first and only try them again when the condition was easing.

No idea what triggered the condition in the first place.

When I first went see the physio I was asked to rate the pain from 1 to 10. I'd no idea what they meant. A few days later I was squeezing through a turnstile at work with stuff under my arm and a pencil sticking out between my fingers. The pencil caught on the turnstile and very gently turned my arm outwards with next to zero force. I nearly passed out. I went back to the physio and said, 'OK, if 10 is when you pass out and 9 is when you vomit, I'm at 8.9."

It’s funny isn’t it, when I was demonstrating to the physio what the problem was and my lack of mobility I caught it wrong and it was SO sharp…cue 15 seconds of hopping around with tears in my eyes swearing like a sailor.

Physio: “right, I can see the problem then”

I’ve given birth three times, so I’m fairly good at visualising the pain scale.  

Have been thinking of the 30 second long stretches I’ve been given in terms of, it’s less than a contraction and I handled them (not that there’s any choice when you are in labour) and use the same technique of big breath in and blow it gently back out.

I have a shoulder problem at the moment, and had a remote physiotherapist consultation, and I'm supposed to be getting an ultrasound exam, but not very quickly. I'm dubious about the latter, as in the past I had a US exam, and was said to shoulder entrapment, yet the ultrasonographer did not seem to know what they were looking at, and just seemed to give that pigeon hole diagnosis.

So what is the technical term for frozen shoulder? Is it a general diagnosis for a vague problem around the shoulder, or does it have a very exact meaning?

I know that I made my shoulder worse by climbing last week...

Adhesive capsulitis is the technical term I believe.

Physio said it’s when the muscles and tendons surrounding the shoulder joint shrink and tighten, causing pain and loss of mobility.  It can be in response to injury or for no apparent reason at all.  Medical profession find it a bit of a mystery as to why it happens then usually eventually goes away again.

Thank you.

So from the descriptive name, it would appear that you have to break down the adhesions restricting the movement of the joint capsule: Hence the discomfort in working through the exercises.

Professor Lennard Funk shoulderdoc.uk.com is an expert in this condition and performs hydrodilation injection which cured me a few years ago after months of severe pain and mobility restriction of this nasty condition- his website above is excellent for info. I couldn’t recommend enough. 

Distension arthrogram was the procedure I had to rupture the adhesions. It involved a local anaesthetic followed by a steroid injection then a tube inserted into the joint which was then filled with either air or fluid to expand the joint and separate all the adhered tissue. It sounds horrible but the only unpleasant bit was the local anaesthetic injection and that was no big deal. I could feel the joint expanding and the tissue tearing apart but without any pain, it was quite odd. It immediately gave me back almost all of my mobility, though a lot of physio was required afterwards,

If you're a vet I would imagine your knowledge of mammalian physiology and of where to search on the internet for such things would be a bit more advanced than most.

Yes, that description is painfully accurate to my experience of it about 10 years ago. It was a game changer for me in the use of analgesia. I'd always been of the mindset that I didn't like to completely hide pain because I wanted to be aware of what my body was trying to tell me or protect. The blunt explanation that I had to take quite significant pain medication so that I could even start to do mobilisation exercises was a revelation, and worked.

I've recently gone through quite significant physical trauma (not shoulders) but as a result of that my physical activity has stopped. Shoulder pain and restricted mobility is starting again literally due to lack of use, but I'm determined to not let it evolve into this issue again. This thread has been a good prompt to get on top of it, thanks. The good news is that it does improve! Although in my experience, once fixed, you have to keep the joints moving. Unfortunately overhead sports are apparently not great for general shoulder health, although I don't know how true that is.

Sealwife, you'll get through it. It's not nice, it's frustrating, but it heals and you'll get your form back again. Ibuprofen was nowhere near enough for me. Don't be afraid to discuss other pain relief options.

I dislocated my shoulder many years ago climbing. Some years later it started to seize up, possibly the onset of a frozen shoulder. Anyway, I went climbing at the Roaches, somehow when you're climbing you forget about the shoulder, and swinging around on handjams ( on Mincer I think) seemed to cure it.

If it makes you feel any better I want to thank you. I'm 3 weeks in to ignoring a painful shoulder and reading this thread prompted me to go see a physio today before it gets worse and potentially becomes a frozen shoulder. 

Thank you for the virtual kick up the bum and I hope you recover soon.